Mobile Phone Moments

What brings mobile phones to mind is the movie I went to see last night. Granted, "The Last King of Scotland" had nothing to do with cell phones, and in fact, during the period of history the movie addresses -- Uganda in the 1970s -- cell phones weren't even a twinkle in Steve Jobs eyePhone. No, what brought mobile phones to mind at the movie were the phones moviegoers forgot to put in vibrate mode or just turn off.

But back to today's mobile phone news....

Sony Ericsson has announced its plans to manufacture mobile phones in India, through manufacturing agreements with outsourcers Flextronics and Foxconn. (The announcement was made in Chennai which, you recall, is where I was a week or so ago.) What's mind-boggling about this is that annual production capacity in India expected to reach 10 million by 2009. That's a lot of cell phones.

Initially the focus will be to manufacture basic color phones and mid-level music-enabled phones, for local distribution. In addition to competitive pricing, these phones will offer customized features for the Indian market, such as local content and customized keypads. Today, Sony Ericsson is among the top 3 GSM handset players in the country.With a GSM subscriber base of 105.4 million, India is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world, and forms a priority growth market for Sony Ericsson worldwide.

Seagate and cell phones? Sure, why not. What with all the video, audio, and even an occasional phone call, applications and data can eat up a lot of memory on mobile phones. That's why Seagate is starting to talk about "Crickett," its "Digital Audio Video Experience" that provides 10-40GB of wireless storage for cell phones. Crickett is a portable wireless storage solution. Crickett works seamlessly with Bluetooth-, WiFi- and USB-equipped handsets to provide substantial capacity without impacting a phone’s design or cost. According to In-Stat Research, there will be more than 540 million Bluetooth-enabled handsets and 11 million WiFi phones in 2007. Crickett-based storage devices will be about the size of a credit card and operate at up to 30 feet from phones. Software has already been produced for J2ME, BREW, Windows Mobile, and Symbian, among others.

Okay, the iPod isn't a cell phone, but Apple has announced a breakthrough that deserves mentioning. In a nutshell, Apple delivering the iPod Shuffle in four new colors--blue, pink, green, and orange. "With the Shuffle, color is arguably more important because you're going to wear it, and when you're going to wear it, it becomes more of a fashion item," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's vice president of worldwide iPod product marketing. At least now we know why the Apple Lisa never made it in the marketplace -- it lacked fashion sense.

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:09 AM  Permalink